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A regular summary of irregular news and notes from neighborhood blogs and email lists around the District.
The Mature Residents: In a thread titled, “Problems with the college set…” a member of the Brookland email list writes, “Hi all. It is after 12:30 am and I had to call the police to quiet down those whippersnappers. The house on the corner of 15th and Irving regularly has parties and has cars and people by the scores attend. I don’t mind youthful exuberance, but I do mind the clumsy transitions they have when the car stereos are blaring and the yelling and slamming of car doors announce their coming and going.” The member continues, in a complaint echoed across the city by residents who homestead near campuses, “It is too much to lose sleep when the kids wake and too much when one has to work the next day. Many a times a drunken girl and guy are fighting and I need to explain to my 9 year old daughter what is happening, never mind the 4 and 7 year olds and the groggy 12 year old..We have several mature residents on the street as well as young children, infants and working stiffs who just need 5 minutes more of sleep. I was hoping that Brookland veterans could help me in figuring out who I could call at the University that could reinforce some etiquette and common sense in these brash folks. They are juniors and here for another year.” The message concludes, “I love Lady Gaga, but at 1 a.m.?”
It Was Once a City: A message on the TakomaDC email list from the mayor’s Ward 4 liaison, Valencia S. Becks, advertises the forthcoming One City Summit, at which D.C. residents can discuss with their neighbors, fellows, and Mayor Vince Gray what that oft-repeated line of “one city” really means. Unfortunately, Becks’ message trumpets, “MAYOR VINCENT C. GRAY INVITES YOU TO THE ONCE CITY SUMMIT.”
Can’t Hang: On the Chevy Chase email list, a member provides this tip: “A few years ago someone who studied ‘urban canids’ posted on the Cleveland Park [email list] about how to tell coyotes and foxes apart, noting that there was a lot of variation in coloring. The one aspect she noted that was different was how each species generally carried its tail. When running, foxes (and dogs) usually carry their tail straight out from their back; coyotes run with their tails hanging lower.”
Cleveland Park, ISO: Members of the Cleveland Park email list are in search of the following: “laundry for table linens” (“We had a traditional gathering of family and friends over the holidays and a meal on our linen table cloth with matching napkins. The meal was enjoyed and the linens sustained their own “traditional” evidence of use, so they now need to be washed, pressed, etc. Where do list readers take theirs and are they happy with the results?”), “short term office assistant,” and “a plastic surgeon.” There’s also a lengthy request for “somebody to do sketches of a house,” which includes the following specifications: “We have a house in Maryland that needs what might be called an entryway enhancement—not a porch or even particularly a vestibule, but a visual element that does not necessarily need to function. The problem is that there are many choices, but we don’t know how they would look on our particular house. For that we need some simple sketches (black & white pencil is fine). We are trying to figure out the right design to choose as well as the proper scale of the enhancement. Six to eight sketches might do it. FYI, we have architects and contractors. That is not the problem. The issue is that we don’t know what to ask to be designed because we don’t have any idea how various alternatives would look”